Digital cameras capture still and/or moving images and store the captured images in a memory. Typically, the memory includes a semiconductor memory, such as a nonvolatile RAM (NVRAM) memory. A captured image is converted into digital image data, which defines the color and intensity of each pixel of an image. The image data may be stored in an NVRAM memory on a removable memory card, such as a compact flash card, Memory Stick®, or the like. In some cases, a digital camera may store still and/or moving images on a CD-ROM and/or a DVD-ROM disk.
Along with the digital image, the camera may also store certain information regarding the image and/or the conditions under which the image was captured. Information that may be stored may include the date and/or time the image was recorded, the type of lens on the camera, the lens focal length setting, the exposure setting, the aperture setting, etc. Such information may be helpful, for example to the photographer, when later processing the image and/or for planning future images.
The information may be stored, for example, as “image metadata.” In this context, “image metadata” refers to information that is not image data but that relates to an image and may be stored in the same electronic file as the image. It will be appreciated that metadata may be stored in the same electronic file as image data and/or may be stored separately from the image data.
However, the information described above that is typically stored as image metadata may relate only to “internal” settings, i.e. settings of the camera itself that are known to the camera because they are controlled by its electronic control system.